Interview: Suda51

Inside the fevered brain behind No More Heroes

Obviously your love of Lucha Libre wrestling is evident in most of your games, and you started out working on the Fire Pro Wrestling series. Do you ever think you’ll make another wrestling game, perhaps with some remote and Nunchuk power slams?

I can’t believe you know about that! As you know, wrestling isn’t as popular in Japan as it once was. I don’t think wrestling games would make much of a profit, so I’d much rather include it in a game in my own way.

A lot of noise has been made over the lack of blood in the European and Japanese versions of the game. Do you see the bloody US version as the definitive version of the game?

It’s hard to say. I like the ‘feel’ you get from the coins coming out in the Japanese/European version. It’s more eccentric. What do you think? We think so too.

Good. (laughs)

From what we’ve played and seen, we think the characters of No More Heroes, and many of your other works, would be well suited to anime. Ever thought of branching out in that direction?

As you may know, our publisher, Marvelous, actually does a lot of animation work, so it’s something that has been discussed. We were actually in discussions to do something with the Bizarre Jelly characters as seen on Travis’ shirt, but I have no idea how serious they were. Hey, tell your readers if they want to see it, write in and give them the feedback. There’s every chance it could get made.